An Afternoon at the Library

I'm spending an afternoon at the library on the college campus! I feel like a college student again! Michael is studying and I am trying to stay occupied and not distract him at the same time. Michael has one more test on Monday and then he'll graduate on Saturday. He and I are both really excited about that. We'll both finally be out of college. I think he's a little bit more excited than I am though, haha!

We are on the 7th floor, and I got a little bored just sitting here in front of my computer, so naturally I decided to wander the floor and peruse through the shelves. Would you know that our table is smack dab in the middle of the Romantic writers?! I was thrilled! I grabbed an anthology titled English Romantic Writers edited by David Perkins of Harvard University and sashayed back to the table, proud and eager to look through my find. Of course, Michael kind of chuckled and rolled his eyes when I came back. I don't think he was surprised one bit that I brought back a new book to read. Anyway, poems from the 1700's are much more interesting to me than Economic Geography, which is what he is studying right now.

This anthology is a collection of a few of the greatest writers of the Romantic Period and their best works. Authors such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Moore, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats are included. As I read through some of their writings, I felt almost as if I were intruding. Some of their poems and letters are so personal, so raw, so anguished and passionate, and... so similar to what people experience and feel today. Some were poems about divorce, some about loss, some about passion with a lover, some about politics, some about joy. All seemed relevant to our culture. It is strange and yet comforting at the same time that people, no matter what time period, or how many years pass in between, experience the same gamut of emotions and problems and passions. It's timeless. No matter what I'm going through, someone else has already been there and left a mark. I'll leave you with a couple that I liked.

So, We'll Go No More A-Roving by Lord Byron (1817)

So, we'll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart still be as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul outwears the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon.

I Cry Your Mercy by John Keats (1819)

I cry your mercy- pity- love!- aye, love!

Merciful love that tantalizes not,

One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,

Unmasked, and being seen- without a blot!

O! let me have thee whole,- all- all- be mine!

That shape, that faireness, that sweet minor zest

Of love, your kiss,- those hands, those eyes divine,

That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,-

Yourself- your soul- in pity give me all,

Withhold no atom's atom or I die,

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,

Forget in the mist of idle misery,

Life's purposes- the palate of my mind

Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!